Perhaps the most misleading element of this story is its title. “Three For Ship” is less of a swan song, and more of a battle cry. If you are expecting a carefree tale of frat brothers battling each other in a grungy basement to vintage rock, look elsewhere.

Instead, “Three for Ship” is more of an unearthing, a grim stripping of the walls erected between the world behind the Ivy League gates of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and the real world which every depraved alcohol-soaked Greek life member will eventually be expunged into- whether gracefully, or with disciplinary action, as in the case of Chris Knight, or, as dubbed by his Chi-Gam brothers, “Balls.”

Written in the first person, Chris Knight enters Dartmouth a conscious minority student, determined not to have a minority experience. As a freshman, Chris expects to have “a Dartmouth experience,” one devoid of race, class, or other distinction. Yet the magnetism of Greek Row teaches Chris that a new social order does exist- one with rankings based on fraternity membership that dominates the campus. Here, in this new social order, Chris ekes out his identity his freshman year in hundreds of games of beer pong, the classic college drinking game, which takes on new meaning as Chris struggles to move up from the lowly “Junior Varsity” tables in the back room of his chosen frat house, to the coveted “Varsity tables.”

As Chris’ relationship to beer pong intensifies, it slowly crosses the line to his identity, and his transformation to the apathetic, alcoholic, “Balls.” Written in the third person, “Balls” has no aspirations beyond returning to the Chi-Gam basement to blackout and boot heaps of steamy vomit.

A memoir written in a timeline, “Three for Ship” is the unveiling of the darker side of Ivy League, and college culture. Battling alcoholism, “Balls,” continuously asks those around him, “Did Dartmouth do this to me? By being here was I committed to this fate?” His university becomes his scapegoat and beer pong the meaning of his life, pulling away the curtain of the elite held by the Ivy League. In the midst of the college scandals ranging from Dartmouth to Texas Tech, in which plights of hazing, binge drinking and date-rape are consistently coming to light, and college culture is being analyzed as never before, “Three for Ship” seeks to analyze one man’s college experience, and address these questions as someone who lived through the thick of it.

Brutally honest, with scenes describing locking pledges into the trunks of cars, being ruthlessly vomited on in a frat house basement, and spending fifty man hours creating beautiful beer pong tables, “Three for Ship” cannot be viewed as an epic describing the college experience, or a condemning of the Greek life system. Instead, “Three for Ship” is a memoir at heart, filled with personal reflection, but also an odd justification of the actions of the brothers of the fraternity based on the status quo. Incredibly, the tone of the novel resonates with the members of the frat house, adding an authenticity and realness to the book which is at once intriguing and disturbing. To bear witness to the destruction of a life through literature is painful to read, but the honesty and fairness given by Chrispus Knight to his college experience makes “Three for Ship” worth reading, not for the non-existent morals gained from the story, or the uplifting ending, but for the outpouring of the soul of a culture that is currently being picked at by college administration, law enforcement, and the general public.

While the subject matter may be familiar, the bleakness of the presentation of “Balls” experience creates a vastly new and interesting look at the competitive college experience. In the midst of an environment riddled with stress, alcoholism becomes the only escape for a man once obsessed with his identity, but now content with the shell of his existence as destroyed in the basement of Chi-Gam. Read from a distance, “Three for Ship” is the perfect insider’s view at a problem that is unlikely to be resolved, but will continue to be analyzed by the public for years to come.

Read without a sense of morality, only an interest in the true culture of college basements and youthful mistakes, and you will not be disappointed by this battle cry.

Number of pages: 248

Recommended for: the weekend before a college reunion, a bedside table, anyone interested in collegiate politics or fraternities

A few weeks ago a friend asked a pressing question, one that I felt was so simple it barely needed an explanation at first. He conversationally asked, “So, if I wrote a book, how would I get self-published?”

Easy, right? But as I started to explain my answer, I realized how vague my response was. How would you know whether you should be self-published in the first place? Why wouldn’t you pursue traditional publishing first? Which company would be best? Would it depend on the genre you wrote in? How would you market your materials?

All of these questions swirled in my head, until finally I gave up my explanation, and said I would get back to him. I felt inspired to create a series of interviews with self-published authors from these questions, and to create a resource for those interested in self-publishing, those in a marketing rut, and people wondering what the true day-to-day lives of self-published authors are like.

The following is the first in a series of interviews, which will hopefully begin a dialogue on self-publishing, and create a resource for those interested in self-publishing to use by creating a network of known self-published authors interested in talking about their trade!

Jesse L. Byers is an author by night. By day, he works in billing and finance for a Fortune 500 company, but his journey to this point in his life, where he “prefers to keep a low profile, maintain his library, and do what many others should do– live each day to the fullest,” has not been easy. Born in Norfolk, Virginia, he grew up poor, living in low income housing and attending inner city schools. In his teens, he relocated to Los Angeles, where he held a variety of retail jobs before becoming an ordained minister, “like so many other mail-order screwballs” and finally began publishing his novels. He dabbled in politics, volunteered on local and presidential campaigns and even ran for office himself. Today he resides in the suburbs of Los Angeles and has left religion, writing and politics in the past. He was gracious enough to be interviewed on a variety of topics relating to self-publishing!

Q: When you began the process of writing your book, had you ever heard of self-publishing?
A: My first book, Broken World, was written well before the advent of resources like Infinity or Amazon KDP. I tried traditional publishing and watched the rejection letters stack up. I knew of vanity presses but they were very expensive at the time. I began to consider self-publishing as an option because seeing my book in print was important to me; it was a goal and a dream. As I began to research vanity presses I came across iUniverse, Infinity, etc., and they started to become a more viable option for self-publishing than had previously been available. I made use of iUniverse for Broken World and moved to Infinity for cost and efficiency when I wrote its sequel Road to Calvary and my third book, The Thin Green Line.

Q: What are the benefits of self-publishing in your life, how do you make it work for you?
A: The main benefit for me is the freedom and control. With my work I get to tell the story the way I want to tell it, decide the look of the book and how it’s presented to people. I know editors are there for a reason; sometimes you need someone to say “no” but for that isn’t an issue. I’ve no notions of becoming wealthy off these books, I’m not laboring under an illusion that I can make this a career and therefore need the guiding hand of an expert. Very few writers can achieve that. Writing is something I love. Seeing my book in print is a success in and of itself. So to have complete control over that process, from first words on the page to final print edition in hand, it’s a rewarding and fulfilling experience.

Q: What is the greatest struggle you find as a self-published author?
A: Getting noticed. As I said, I don’t expect to become wealthy but I still want to sell books. I want people to notice me and my work and read my stories. It’s a big world out there and there are ads everywhere you look. Everywhere, someone is advertising something and the proliferation of self-published authors makes it easier still to get lost in that mix. That’s not a bad thing, the more written works available to people the better. But managing to get people to notice your work in a sea of millions is exceedingly difficult.

Q: How do you overcome the struggle?
A: Social media has been an indescribable blessing to folks like me. I’ve bought newspaper ads and website banners but none of it translated into recognizable sales or attention the way things like
Facebook and Twitter have.

Q:Did you work with a paid editor? If not, what were the most successful techniques you found to edit something so personal to you?
A: I used a professional editor on my first two books. The person was a friend who agreed to do the work as a favor though she normally gets paid for it. Being a friend she could be brutally honest and I didn’t have any reservations about following her professional opinion as well as personal feelings. I didn’t use an editor for The Thin
Green Line. I did the editing myself, both copy and style. For various reasons there were intentional editorial “mistakes” left in the book here and there. (Much of the book was originally written as blog postings and the “mistakes” were left in to preserve the original style of those postings, so I’m not really as bad an editor as I might
seem. I explain this on my web site.)

Q:What about the book cover? Did you take the picture yourself or work with a graphic designer?
A: As I’ve said, I value complete control over the process. The covers to all three books were conceived by myself. The basic concept was my own design and the professionals supplied by the press did the actual work. The exception would be my second book, Road to Calvary. The cover was a photo I took and manipulated. It’s somewhat simplistic but it was intended to be.

Q: Did you purchase your own ISBN, or work with a company to purchaserights and an ISBN?
A: In all three cases it was supplied as part of the process by the press. It speaks to the ease of the process available to authors like myself these days that we don’t have to hassle with minutia such as this. We can remain focused on the more creative aspect of the process.

Q: Do you have more e-Book or hard copy sales?
A: e-Book, definitely. My most recent book, The Thin Green Line, was published initially only in trade paperback and after judging the response to it I chose to make an ebook version available as well. It was a wise decision. The downloads are more than triple that of the hard copy sales. The royalties are higher off ebooks and I think people are more willing to take a chance on a book when its available at a lower cost. Thin Green Line retails in trade for $13.95 and $3.95 in ebook. If you spend $14 on something and its awful, you’re going to be upset and feel cheated. So maybe this unknown quantity isn’t worth your time or money to take that chance. But $4? The morning coffee at Starbucks costs more than that. You can probably take that chance without feeling its too much of a risk. I know I’ve sold my book because its available in ebook form when it might not be moving at all if it were only in trade.

Q: What is the most rewarding element of self-publishing?
A: Seeing my book in print. A writer writes because they have something to say, a story to tell. You sit down and you spill your heart and soul onto the page and breathe life into the characters and create a world and tell these stories. Then you have them bound and available for people to read and enjoy. Or hate. Or just feel a big blah towards them. Doesn’t matter. They still see it, they read it. Something you worked so hard to create has been experienced by someone else. Writers today are extremely lucky and blessed that they have the plethora of self publishing options available to them now. When you consider the untold numbers of people over the years who may have written stories and never seen them published or just dumped them in a drawer to rot or just never got the chance to tell their stories, it’s an unspeakable tragedy those people never had the options available to us today.

Q: How do you market and brand your stories?
A: Social media has been an unbelievable boon to the indie writer. Twitter seems to be a major source of “free” revenue and traffic. Follow this person or that, this company or
that, tweet and retweet, your name is out there and suddenly you have the notice of hundreds if not thousands of people who might just retweet you and so on and so on. It all points to your name, your Facebook, your website and ultimately your book. Beyond the time invested in tweeting and updating the website or Facebook page, there’s no money expended and you’ve got free advertising. The majority of sales on my third book, The Thin Green Line, came by way of Twitter.

Q: Do you ever go on book tours?
A: No. I’m just not that big. If somehow my books went crazy and I started selling enough to make the money to justify such a thing I would of course but it’s not even on the horizon.

Q: Did you publish through Amazon?
A: I did not. I researched it and chose to go another way. I still prefer a press that offered me the opportunity to see my book in physical form. That being said, if that isn’t an issue for an author, I see no reason whatsoever not to use Amazon’s KDP program. I have a friend who made use of it and its served him well. It’s an incredibly
easy program to use.

Q: How did you decide to price your book?
A: There are pricing ranges suggested by the press. Final choice is yours so you have to consider certain things carefully. You look at other works of similar genre, length and you work from there. You also consider the fact that if you’re using a self publishing method you’re likely to be an unknown quantity so you want to price your work accordingly. You and your mother might think your work is priceless but the average reader who has never heard of you might only be willing to pay $5.

Q: Did you work with a company to self-publish your book?
A: iUniverse for the first book, Infinity for the next two.

Q: What kind of support would be most helpful to self-publishedauthors?
A: Frankly, a little more respect and recognition by more mainstream outlets. I know that’s a tall order but if self published “indie” authors could be recognized as real talents there might be more options available to them.
Look at it this way: if a musical act rents a studio and cuts an album, they’re considered an Indie Band and acknowledged for their artistic talent and creativity, unhindered by the suits a a label.
Likewise, a filmwriter or director cobbles together some rusted cameras and makes a low-budget movie and they’re hailed as an Indie Darling and lauded for their artistic integrity.
Somehow, when a writer uses a service like Amazon or Infinity or other self publishing method, they’re considered a hack telling a poorly written story nobody wants to read.
But no one wanted to hear that band until they made their own album. Nobody wanted to see that movie until that director made it himself. Indie talent is rewarded in other fields but scoffed at when it comes to writers. I worked in a bookstore for five years. Every book in there from a big commercial publishing house was chosen because someone thought it was good enough to be a seller. Not all of them are. Not many, in fact. A great many of them are considered awful, unreadable. Yet they got published in the traditional way. And yet there are many self or indie published books that are magnificent reads, wonderful stories and great works of literature. They may have been rejected numerous times by traditional publishing houses. Sometimes, the pros are wrong. If mainstream media or print recognized that and began to cover indie authors more then there might be better recognition for them. More outlets might arise for them. Publications or web sites may spring up devoted only to finding and promoting the indie/self published authors of the world. They might begin to sell better and things like editorial services and marketing services might become more affordable. In the end the more unpolished indie authors might be able to take advantage of these options and become better and the really good ones out there could become better still.

Translations (done well) can enrich our own experiences with the sounds, sights and feelings of other cultures, all without leaving the warm knit blanket gracing the couch. Grab a macchiato, a sweater (or perhaps a beret) and enjoy these foreign reads brought to English.

Image credit Tuppus via Flickr Creative Commons

Mysteries by Knut Hamsun

“But what really matters is not what you believe but the faith and conviction with which you believe…”

Reminiscent of modern Russian literature, Mysteries is a Norwegian translation centering in a small, unkempt (and very cold) Norwegian city, and the presence of a single man who has the audacity to bring upset to the town. A study in personality and presence, Mysteries brings a taste of Norway to the English market a few years after the Millennium trilogy left us wanting more from Scandinavia.

The Same Sea by Amos Oz

“I wrote The Same Sea not as a political allegory about Israelis and Palestinians. I wrote it about something much more gutsy and immediate. I wrote it as a piece of chamber music.”

Indeed, the author delivers. While this allegorical exploration of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict draws heavily on specific places and violence associated with the region, the strength of the prose, and its common human links, make it a more powerful exploration of conflict on a global level. The book is written in a unique prose, which flows like a combination between poetry, and intense dialogue, with interludes from a narrator come to clarify the intersecting storyline between a father and son, and two women, who bask in the quiet of a war-torn place during a war-torn era.

Hardboiled and Hard Luck by Banana Yoshimoto

“She was still there inside me now, just as she always was: a life put on hold, a memory I didn’t know how to handle.”

Two love stories that are distinctly Japanese unfold across the pages of this translation. In many ways, this book can be read as a translation of Eastern love into Western terms, which makes it a valuable introduction for first-time readers to contemporary Japanese novels, because what translates better across the oceans than the shared language of love? Respect and loss are also observed, with a distinctive reverence for those departed, and cherishing of those still in Japan, and still on this Earth.

We all have those moments. You’ve been waiting all week for the chance to write, and now, at 10 AM on a crisp Saturday morning, at your local cafe with a steaming latte to your left and notebook to your right, nothing is coming. You’re blocked, stumped, and the eagerness to write that you held all week is evaporating, just like the steam cascading up from your coffee.

Writer’s block can be a good thing. It offers us a moment to look back at what we’ve written and evaluate it, and to delve deeper into our characters. This can be a strong moment for character development and understanding, a chance to hammer out details on personalities, settings, and descriptions, without feeling constrained by the framework of your story.

The way to overcome writer’s block is to write through it. Don’t feel tied to your story, or to a minimum word count. Feel tied to your characters and your scenery. Instead of working through plot points and continuing with your story, write out these scenarios and prospects. Get out of your own head and into your character’s with these scenes. And remember…

While you’re working, don’t go back. No erasing or changing. These are not polished stories, they are snippets. Grammatical errors are okay. Incomplete thoughts are okay. You don’t have to be coherent with the rest of your story.

Don’t set a limit to the number of words. When you set out to write a novel, you do not set out to write a “127,842 word novel.” You set out to tell a story. Treat these exercises the same way. You are writing to overcome writer’s block creatively, by gaining insight into the realm of your story.

Don’t feel limited by the current range of your fictional or nonfictional world. Want to write a new character? Do it. Writing is a craft. It’s something improved by practice, just like a musical instrument. Do not feel limited by what you have written so far, by the parameters of reality or fantasy that your story occurs in. Breach out of what you expect from yourself as a writer.

The following scenarios are the perfect writer’s block jumpstarts:

1. Put a character at a bar. What bar do they go to? A swanky hotel or the dive bar halfway down the alley? What are they wearing? Who are they there with? Who do they talk to? What drink do they order? When do they leave? With whom do they leave? Write a conversation they’d have with a stranger. Who approaches them? Do they approach others? Repeat this exercise with a few characters. Blend them. If two of your characters are at a bar together, what happens? Do they ignore each other? The purpose of this exercise is to expose dialogue, morality, and motives.

2. Archetype your characters, or put them into a fairytale. This exercise is somewhat diluted, but very fun. Make your characters pure archetypes. The evil stepmother. The naive debutante. Alter the personality of one character and see how the others interact. What is it about your characters that draw them to each other? Are your characters archetypes? How are your characters unique? Put your characters into a fairytale. Choose a well-known tale that you’re familiar with. Say, Cinderella. Now choose your story, as an example we’ll use Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Dobby will play Cinderella for our purposes. Dobby’s magic slipper is a sock. Instead of being given by his fairy godmother, it’s given to him by his malicious master, Lucius Malfoy. Harry Potter is the magic prince, Dobby’s love, the one he would die for… the stories are so different, yet broken down into elemental pieces, they connect on levels you would not expect. How does this change the story? What would the outcome of a well-known fairytale be with your characters? This is almost a brainteaser as much as it is a writing exercise. Exploring this type of brain-bending transformation gives new perspective on characters and settings.

3. Change your setting. Drastically. Then write your story as if in this setting. This allows you determine the subtle elements of your story and what they add or detract from the plot. Choose Siberia. The streets of New York. Using our Harry Potter example, does Hogwarts become a yurt in the midst of the tundra? Or FAO Schwarz in the middle of the city? Is the environment of Hogwarts what gives way to such incredible magical learning? If Harry, Hermione and Ron were constantly faced with the New York subway and eight million Muggles, how would their story be different? How do your characters interact with the setting? Is the setting integral to your story, and if not, how can you make your setting unique to your characters and the plot of the story? The harder to transcribe elements of the places in your story to other places, the more deeply ingrained your characters are in their world. This is a good thing, as the setting can often be another character, adding mood and drama to a plot.

4. Choose a few characters and strand them, whether on an island, a volcano, or some completely supernatural scenario where their chance of survival or return to civilization is minimal. How do they cope? Are there sacrifices? Who gives to the cause? Who takes from it? In the vein of Lord of the Flies, scenarios like these can establish character weaknesses and strengths, egos, and senses of validity. In times of crisis, true colors are revealed. Do you know your characters well enough to predict how they would act at the end?

5. Write the ending. If you are on page three of a five-page short story, or page one of what you hope will be the next great American novel, write out the end. It may be predictable, or far-fetched, but it can help you to understand where your characters are going, or where you want them to be. If you have an idea of a novel for a young wizard boy sent to a magical school, how does it end? Think of the incredible range of possibilities and write down a few scenarios? Much like working backwards, this can help you to visualize where your characters are now compared to where you’d like them to be with the final stroke of your pen.

Sometimes, going beyond the realm of your original story plan is the only way to break the monotony of writing. While it may be a shift away from your goal, these prompts are meant to overcome writer’s block while developing characters, setting and storyline, and exposing the links that can be missed when writing purely for plot. Do you have any other suggestions or prompts for ways to overcome writers block?